One Door Away From Heaven Read online

  At what she judged to be a safe distance, perhaps ten feet past the fence, Micky stopped to watch Leilani’s mother, half mesmerized by her bizarre performance.

  From her back door, Aunt Gen said, “Micky dear, we’re putting dessert on the table, so don’t be long,” and she went inside.

  Repenting its larceny, the cloud surrendered the stolen moon, and Sinsemilla raised her slender arms toward the sky as though the lunar light inspired joy. Face tilted to bask in the silvery rays, she turned slowly in place, and then sidestepped in a circle. Soon she began to dance light-footedly, in a graceful swooping manner, as though keeping time to a slow waltz that only she could hear, with her face raised to the moon as if it were an admiring prince who held her in his arms.

  Brief trills of laughter escaped Sinsemilla. Not brittle and mad laughter, as Micky might have expected. This was a girlish merriment, sweet and musical, almost shy.

  In a minute, the laughter trailed away, and the waltz spun to a conclusion. The woman allowed her invisible partner to escort her to the back-door steps, upon which she sat in a swirl of ruffled embroidery, as a schoolgirl in another age might have been returned to one of the chairs around the dance floor at a cotillion.

  Oblivious of Micky, Sinsemilla sat, elbows propped on her knees, chin cupped in the heels of her hands, gazing at the starry sky. She seemed to be a young girl dreamily fantasizing about true romance or filled with wonder as she contemplated the immensity of creation.

  Then her fingers fanned across her face. She hung her head. The new round of weeping was subdued, inexpressibly melancholy, so quiet that the lament drifted to Micky as might the voice of a real ghost: the faint sound of a soul trapped in the narrow emptiness between the surface membranes of this world and the next.

  Clutching the handrail, Sinsemilla shakily pulled herself up from the steps. She went inside, into the clock light and shadows of her kitchen, and the jack-o’-lantern glow beyond.

  Micky scrubbed at her knees with the palms of her hands, rubbing off the prickly blades of dead grass that had stuck to her skin.

  The pooled heat of August, like broth in a cannibal’s pot, still cooked a thin perspiration from her, and the calm night had no breath to cool the summer soup.

  Although the flesh might simmer, the mind had a thermostat of its own. The chill that shivered through Micky seemed cold enough to freeze droplets of sweat into beads of ice upon her brow.

  Leilani is as good as dead.

  She rejected that unnerving thought as soon as it pierced her. She, too, had grown up in a wretched family, abandoned by her father, left to the care of a cruel mother incapable of love, abused both psychologically and physically—and yet she had survived. Leilani’s situation was no better but no worse than Micky’s had been, only different. Hardship strengthens those it doesn’t break, and already, at nine, Leilani was clearly unbreakable.

  Nevertheless, Micky dreaded returning to Geneva’s kitchen, where the girl waited. If Sinsemilla in all her baroque detail was not a fabrication, then what of the murderous stepfather, Dr. Doom, and his eleven victims?

  Yesterday, in this yard, as Micky had broiled on the lounge chair, amused and a little disoriented by her first encounter with the self-proclaimed dangerous mutant, Leilani had said several peculiar things. Now one of them echoed back in memory. The girl had asked if Micky believed in life after death, and when Micky returned the question, the girl’s simple reply had been, I better.

  At the time, the answer seemed odd, although not particularly dark with meaning. In retrospect, those two words carried a heavier load than any of the freight trains that Micky had imagined escaping on when, as she lay sleepless in another time and place, they had rolled past in the night with a rhythmic clatter and a fine mournful whistle.

  Here, now, the hot August darkness. The moon. The stars and the mysteries beyond. No getaway train for Leilani, and perhaps none for Micky herself.

  Do you believe in life after death?

  I better.

  Four elderly women, three elderly men, a thirty-year-old mother of two…a six-year-old boy in a wheelchair…

  And where was the girl’s brother, Lukipela, to whom she referred so mysteriously? Was he Preston Maddoc’s twelfth victim?

  Do you believe in life after death?

  I better.

  “Dear God,” Micky whispered, “what am I going to do?”

  Chapter 10

  EIGHTEEN-WHEELERS LOADED with everything from spools of abb to zymometers, reefer semis hauling ice cream or meat, cheese or frozen dinners, flatbeds laden with concrete pipe and construction steel and railroad ties, automobile transports, slat-sided trailers carrying livestock, tankers full of gasoline, chemicals: Scores of mammoth rigs, headlights doused but cab-roof lights and marker lights colorfully aglow, encircle the pump islands in much the way that nibbling stegosaurs and grazing brontosauruses and packs of hunting theropods had eons ago circled too close to the treacherous bogs that swallowed them by the thousands, by the millions. Rumbling-growling-wheezing-panting, each big truck waits for its communion with the nozzle, feeding on two hundred million years of bog distillations.

  This is how the motherless boy understands the current theory of bitumen deposits in general and petroleum deposits in particular, as put forth locally in everything from textbooks to the Internet. Yet even though he finds the idea of dinosaurs-to-diesel-fuel silly enough to have first been expounded by Daffy Duck or another Looney Tunes star, he is excited by the spectacle of all these cool trucks congregating at rank upon rank of pumps, in a great dazzle and rumble and fumy reek here in the middle of an otherwise dark, silent, and nearly scent-free desert.

  From his hiding place in the Explorer on the lower deck of the car transport, he watches as purposeful men and women busily tend to their rigs, some of them colorful figures in hand-tooled boots and Stetsons, in studded and embroidered denim jackets, many in T-shirts emblazoned with the names of automotive products, snack foods, beers, and country-and-western bars from Omaha to Santa Fe, to Abilene, to Houston, to Reno, to Denver.

  Disinterested in the bustle, not stirred—as the boy is—by the romance of travel and the mystery of exotic places embodied in these superhighway Gypsies, the dog is curled compactly on the passenger’s seat, lightly dozing.

  Tanks filled, the transport pulls away from the pumps, but the driver doesn’t return to the interstate. Instead, he steers his rig into an immense parking lot, apparently intending to stop either for dinner or a rest.

  This is the largest truck stop the boy has seen, complete with a sprawling motel, motor-home park, diner, gift shop, and according to one highway sign glimpsed earlier, a “full range of services,” whatever that might encompass. He has never been to a carnival, but he imagines that the excitement he feels about this place must be akin to the thrill of being on an attraction-packed midway.

  Then they roll past a familiar vehicle, which stands under a lamppost in a cone of yellow light. It’s smaller than the giant rigs parked side by side on the blacktop. White cab, black canvas walls. The saddlery truck from Colorado.

  A moment ago, he’d been eager to investigate this place. Now he wants only to move on—and quickly.

  The transport swings into a wide space between two huge trucks.

  Air brakes squeal and sigh. The rumbling engine stops. After the twin teams of Explorers stir slightly in their traces, like sleeping horses briefly roused from dreams of sweet pastures, the silence that settles is deeper than any the boy has heard since the high meadows of Colorado.

  As the puddle of black-and-white fur on the passenger’s seat becomes unmistakably a dog once more, rising to check out their new circumstances, the boy says worriedly, “We’ve got to keep moving.”

  In one sense, the nearness of those searching for him doesn’t matter. The likelihood of his being apprehended within the next few minutes would be just as great if he were a thousand miles from here. His mother has often told him that if you’re clever, cunnin
g, and bold, you can hide in plain sight as confidently as in the most remote and well-disguised bolt-hole. Neither geography nor distance is the key to survival: Only time matters. The longer he stays free and hidden, the less likely that he will ever be found.

  Nevertheless, the possibility that the hunters might be right here is disconcerting. Their nearness makes him nervous, and when he’s nervous, he’s less likely to be clever or cunning, or bold; and they will find him, know him, whether he’s in plain sight or hiding in a cave a thousand feet from sunlight.

  Hesitantly, he eases open the driver’s door and slips out of the SUV onto the bed of the transport.

  He listens. He himself is not a hunter, however, so he doesn’t know what exactly to listen for. The action at the pump islands is a faraway grumble. Muffled country music, oscillating between faint and fainter, seasons the night with enchantment, the landlocked Western equivalent of a siren’s irresistible song drifting across a night-shrouded sea with a promise of wonder and companionship.

  The ramped bed of the auto transport isn’t much wider than the Explorer, too narrow to allow the dog to land safely in a leap from the driver’s seat, which he now occupies. If in fact he had jumped from the porch roof at the Hammond farmhouse, surely the mutt can clear the truck entirely, avoiding the vertical supports between the decks of the open cargo trailer, and spring directly to the parking lot; however, if he possesses the agility to accomplish this feat, he doesn’t possess the confidence. Peering down from his perch, the dog cocks his head left, then right, makes a pathetic sound of anxiety, stifles the whine as though he recognizes the need for stealth, and stares beseechingly at his master.

  The boy lifts the dog out of the Explorer, as earlier he had lifted him up and in, not without considerable contortion. He teeters but keeps his balance and puts his shaggy burden down on the floor of the transport.

  As the boy eases shut the door of the Explorer, the mongrel pads toward the back of the auto carrier, following the ramped bed. He is waiting immediately behind the truck when his master arrives.

  The ears are pricked, the head lifted, the nose twitching. The fluffy tail, usually a proud plume, is held low.

  Although domesticated, this animal nevertheless remains to some degree a hunter, as the boy is not, and he has the instincts of a survivor. His wariness must be taken seriously. Evidently, something in the night smells threatening or at least suspicious.

  Currently, no vehicles are either entering or leaving the lot. No truckers are in sight across the acres of blacktop.

  Although a couple hundred people are nearby, this place in this moment of time seems as lonely as any crater on the moon.

  From the west, out of the desert, arises a light breeze, warm but not hot, carrying the silicate scent of sand and the faint alkaline fragrance of the hardy plants that grow in parched lands.

  The boy is reminded of home, which he will most likely never see again. A pleasant nostalgia wells within him, too quickly swells into a gush of homesickness, inevitably reminding him of the terrible loss of his family, and suddenly he sways as though physically battered by the flood of grief that storms through his heart.

  Later. Tears are for later. Survival comes first. He can almost hear his mother’s spirit urging him to control himself and to leave the grieving for safer times.

  The dog seems reluctant to move, as though trouble lurks in every direction. His tail lowers further, wrapping partly around his right hind leg.

  The motel and the diner lay out of sight to the east, beyond the ranks of parked vehicles, marked by the fiery glow of red neon. The boy sets off in that direction.

  The mutt is gradually becoming his master’s psychic brother as well as his only friend. He shakes off his hesitancy and trots at the boy’s side.

  “Good pup,” the boy whispers.

  They pass behind eight semis and are at the back of a ninth when a low growl from the dog halts the boy. Even if the animal’s sudden anxiety hadn’t been strong enough to feel, the nearest of the tall pole lamps provides sufficient sour yellow light to reveal the animal’s raised hackles.

  The dog peers at something in the oily black gloom under the big truck. Instead of growling again, he glances up at the boy and mewls entreatingly.

  Trusting the wisdom of his brother-becoming, the boy drops to his knees, braces one hand against the trailer, and squints into the pooled darkness. He can see nothing in the murk between the parallel sets of tires.

  Then movement catches his eye, not immediately under the rig but along the side of it, in the lamplit passageway between this vehicle and the next. A pair of cowboy boots, blue jeans tucked in the tops: Someone is walking beside the trailer, approaching the back where the boy kneels.

  Most likely this is an ordinary driver, unaware of the boyhunt that is being conducted discreetly but with great resources and urgency across the West. He’s probably returning from a late dinner, with a thermos full of fresh coffee, ready to hit the road again.

  Another pair of boots follows the first. Two men, not just one. Neither talks, both move purposefully.

  Maybe ordinary drivers, maybe not.

  The young fugitive drops flat to the pavement and slips under the trailer, and the dog crawls beside him into hiding. They huddle together, turning their heads to watch the passing boots, and the boy is oddly excited because this is a situation encountered in all the adventure stories that he loves.

  Admittedly, the character of his excitement is different from what he feels when he experiences such exploits vicariously, through the pages of books. Young heroes of adventure stories, from Treasure Island to The Amber Spyglass, are never eviscerated, decapitated, torn limb from limb, and immolated—which is a possible fate that he envisions for himself too clearly to embrace fully the traditional boy’s-book spirit of derring-do. His excitement has a nervous edge sharper than anything Huckleberry Finn was required to feel, a darker quality. He’s a boy nonetheless, and he’s virtually programmed by nature to be thrilled by events that test his pluck, his fortitude, and his wits.

  The two men reach the back of the trailer, where they pause, evidently surveying the parking lot, perhaps not quite able to recall where they left their rig. They remain silent, as though listening for the telltale sounds that only born hunters can perceive and properly interpret.

  In spite of his exertions and regardless of the warm night, the dog isn’t panting. He lies motionless against his master’s side.

  Good pup.

  Instrument of nostalgia, scented with desert fragrances that remind the boy of home, the breeze is also a broom to the blacktop, sweeping along puffs of dust, spidery twists of dry desert grass, and scraps of litter. With a soft rustle, a loosely crumpled wad of paper twirls lazily across the pavement and comes to rest against the toe of one of the boots. The parking-lot light is bright enough that from a distance of a few feet, the boy can see this is debris with value: a five-dollar bill.

  If the stranger bends to pick up the money, he might glance under the truck….

  No. Even if the man drops to one knee, instead of simply bending down, his head will be well above the bottom of the trailer. He won’t inadvertently get a glimpse of a boy-shape-dog-shape cowering in the shadows cast by the rig.

  After trembling against the boot toe, the five-dollar bill blows free…and twirls under the truck.

  In the gloom, the boy loses track of the money. He’s focused intently on the cowboy boots.

  Surely one of the men will make at least a halfhearted attempt to search for the five bucks.

  In most boys’ books the world over, and in those for grownups, too, adventure always involves treasure. This globe rotates on a spindle of gold. A peglegged, parrot-petting pirate said exactly that, in one tale or another.

  Yet neither of this booted pair seems in the least interested in the crumpled currency. Still without speaking a word to each other, they move on, away from the truck.

  The possibility that neither of them noticed
the money is slim. By their disinterest in the five dollars, they have revealed their true nature. They are engaged in an urgent search for something more important than treasure, and they won’t be distracted.

  The two men walk westward from the back of the semi—in the general direction of the automobile transport.

  The boy and his companion crawl forward, farther under the trailer, toward the cab, and then they slip out of shelter, into the open space between this rig and the next, where they had first glimpsed the cowboy boots.

  Evidently having snatched a small treasure from the teeth of the desert breeze, the dog holds the five-dollar bill in his mouth.

  “Good pup.”

  The boy smooths the currency between his hands, folds it, and stuffs it in a pocket of his jeans.

  Their meager financial resources won’t carry them far, and they can’t expect to find money in the wind whenever they need it. For the time being, however, they are spared the humiliation of committing another larceny.

  Maybe dogs aren’t capable of feeling humiliated. The boy’s never had a dog before. He knows their nature only from movies, books, and a few casual encounters.

  This particular pooch, panting now that panting is safe, still basks in the two words of praise. He is a scamp, a rascally fun-loving creature that lives by the simple rules of wild things.

  In becoming brothers, they will change each other. The dog might become as easily humiliated and as fearfully aware of ever-looming death as his master is, which would be sad. And the boy figures that during their desperate, lonely, and probably long flight for freedom, he himself will have to guard against becoming too much like a dog, wild and given to rash action.

  Without shame, the mutt squats and urinates on the blacktop.

  The boy promises himself that public toileting is a behavior he will never adopt, regardless of how wild the dog might otherwise inspire him to be.

  Better move.

  The two silent men who had headed toward the auto transport won’t be the only searchers prowling the night.